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Customization and on-demand shopping are the two main trends which drive modern e-commerce. Customers are looking for increasingly smart and custom shopping experiences, but managing the process of configuring and designing custom products often involves high costs and long lead times. These are the reasons why Bello Cyclist, a company on WooCommerce specialized in the production of customized cycling caps, implemented an online 3D customizer and designer solution, finding in Zakeke the perfect ally to boost sales and improve internal design processes.
Bello Cyclist was born in London in 2016 with the aim of uniting printing and design industry and the world of cycling. Bello Cyclist focuses on the design and production of 100% cotton customized cycling caps. Bello Cyclist is currently based in Bulgaria and collaborates with many other cycling brands to provide them with own branded and private-label caps.
“The idea behind Bello Cyclist was to provide nice, funky cycling caps, which we couldn’t buy back in the time. Over time we had great feedback from other companies and today we work with other brands as well.”
Kris Hajdu – Owner of Bello Cyclist
THE CHALLENGE
Bello Cyclist was born with the aim of offering the customer a fully on-demand shopping experience: cycling caps are designed by the customer and the company, once it receives the design guidelines, could build the product exactly as the customer requested.
Before choosing Zakeke Visual Product Customizer, Bello Cyclist’s Team managed all the design process of each cycling cap manually. Customers and the company’s Team communicated via emails in order to reach an agreement on the product model. Sometimes it took some weeks to finalize the design: the design process required too much effort due to the excessive manual workload.
Therefore, the main challenge for Bello Cyclist was to find an online 3D designer solution which would allow customers to easily create the product with their own hands, and the company to directly receive the final print files, automating the whole design process.
The design finalization process often took weeks, making the lead time too long. Another important challenge was reducing the lead time and the time-to-purchase: the implementation of a 3D designer solution such as Zakeke made it possible to improve Customer Experience.
Customers design their own caps (following the rules of the company’s printing process) and Zakeke, thanks to its specialization in printing, sends the final print files to Bello Cyclist’s management system. The result? Better Customer Service, with significantly reduced shipping and order management time.
“When we started the company, we were thinking of providing cycling caps customized by our customers. So basically we wanted to offer a one of a kind cycle cap which they designed for themselves, we produce them. The challenge was that basically we ended up dealing with a lot of design work, so that’s when I decided to look for an online 3D designer solution.”
Kris Hajdu – Owner of Bello Cyclist
THE SOLUTION
Bello Cyclist was looking for a 3D designer solution to reduce the design process’ manual work. Why Zakeke? Zakeke offers a better solution regarding value for money. It manages the whole 3D design and configuration process, saving costs of manually configuring models and print files.
“I was receiving prices from different providers and that’s when I came across someone who offered me the whole setup process, the 3D object design process and a very low subscription fee. It took the whole design process off our shoulders.”
Kris Hajdu – Owner of Bello Cyclist
Zakeke’s configuration process was simple and plug-and-play. Zakeke is a plug-in that integrates with the most popular e-commerce platforms, including WooCommerce, used by Bello Cyclist. Zakeke is easy to use (even for those without design skills) and the Zakeke Support Team supported the company during the setup phase by solving problems quickly and easily. The whole configuration and go-live process took a month.
“The setup was very easy. Basically, Zakeke is a plugin. Most of the biggest other e-commerce websites are supported by Zakeke, including WooCommerce, which we use. And it was just a very easy setup process. If I had questions, I turned to Support and they were very handy in answering and very quick.“
Kris Hajdu – Owner of Bello Cyclist
Zakeke provides customers with many features for product design, configuration and customization. Products can be created from scratch or, for less creative customers, using pre-designed templates. You can add lettering using countless fonts and insert logos and images in custom sizes. Finally, customers can see their cycling cap in 3D, knowing exactly what product to expect. In addition, Zakeke allows Bello Cyclist to set up automatic discounting related to the number of products purchased.
“There are a lot of functions which the customer can use during the design process, like the sizes of logos displayed. If someone doesn’t have any ideas, they can use these templates to play around with it. A lot of fonts can be added. So it’s just really a great tool for someone who doesn’t really have any kind of design skills.”
Kris Hajdu – Owner of Bello Cyclist
THE RESULTS
The implementation of Zakeke Visual Product Customizer has enabled Bello Cyclist to significantly reduce time and costs of the manual design process by 90% thanks to fulfilment automation.
With Zakeke, there is no longer a time-wasting multi-handed product creation process: the consumer himself builds the product design, thanks to an easy-to-use tool for both him and the merchant. Then, with a simple click of a button, Bello Cyclist’s Team receives the final print file in the back office and only takes care of the production activity.
“Before the cache, we had to get in touch with the customers. They were emailing us their ideas and we in the studio had to take the time and produce designs, a couple of designs back and forth, emails with the customers. Sometimes it took some weeks in order to finalize their design. And now it’s just a click of a button. We download the design and we save all this admin time: we basically don’t have any more studio hours behind the production.”
Kris Hajdu – Owner of Bello Cyclist
Since Bello Cyclist implemented Zakeke’s Visual Product Customizer in 2019, orders and sales have doubled. The boost in sales is due not only to the implementation of an interactive Shopping Experience, but also to the reduction of lead time (due to the automation of the design process) that had always been a friction in the Customer Experience.
“This feature brought us extra sales in terms of our own caps as well. We have our own design website as well. And people, not just customers, not just buying their own designs, they buy from our caps as well. So it’s generated sales and the sales since we implemented this 3D feature, basically from 2019, have doubled.”
Kris Hajdu – Owner of Bello Cyclist
Zakeke allows customers to configure their product exactly as they want it, providing a unique and completely on-demand Customer Experience. All customers have shown enthusiasm for the new product, especially because they receive the product exactly as they designed it (after a few days).
“The reception of the 3D designer was really great. Everyone basically loved it. They were actually sending emails to us congratulating that finally there is a cycling cap manufacturer who offers this feature to have a cap design. And a lot of feedback, positive feedback came in particularly pinpointing that the cap which they receive is exactly the same as it was during the customization phase thanks also to the 3D preview.”
Kris Hajdu – Owner of Bello Cyclist
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